Nightlife
Multi-media installation with glass tanks, projection, camera obscura, embroidery, and wire sculpture, participation with local community; shown at Maine Coast Artists (now Center for Maine Contemporary Art) in Rockport, Maine, 1996
In Night Life (1996), I invited the local community of Rockport, Maine, into the work from the outset. People were asked to lend their beds and blankets — the places where they sleep, dream, worry, and heal — and to share their dreams with me. At the gallery entrance, a performative scribe wrote these dreams directly onto the wall as visitors arrived, creating a shared threshold into the installation. The words formed a communal overture, an intimate chorus that guided viewers from the brightness of the outer space into the darkened room beyond.
Inside, the installation unfolded as a dreamscape. In one window, a telescope pierced a hole cut through tarpaper; looking through it, visitors saw a single dinghy bobbing on the water outside. Another windows, also covered with tar paper, were punctured with small holes arranged in the pattern of the constellations visible in the sky at that time. A sheer white fabric stretched across the windows, catching camera obscura projections of the exterior landscape, multiplying and scattering the imagery through the constellation holes.
The space carried the scent of rosemary — the herb of remembrance — infusing the installation with a quiet, sensory undertow.
